China safeguards had helped foster a positive trend in U.S. textile and apparel production over the past four-to-six months, according to the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition (AMTAC).
AMTAC's optimism is based on new figures from the Federal Reserve on industrial production. According to the Federal Reserve, textile production rose by 0.3% in October, regaining a revised -0.3% decline of September. More importantly, says AMTAC, the report shows textile production in October has grown 2.4% since May 2005.
The Apparel industry saw October production fall by -2.6% but gains in each of the previous three months were revised up sharply. As a result, Apparel production in October was up 2.0% over the four months since June. Indeed, the sharp revisions to the September data show Apparel production in September up 4.3% over the four months since May. The four-month growth of Apparel production to September is the strongest growth for the industry over a four-month period since June 1994.
"While there are certainly other market factors at play, these increases suggest that the safeguard cases approved by the U.S. government earlier this year and the finalization of an agreement to limit the growth of U.S. textile and apparel imports from China have had a positive effect on the U.S. textile industry," said AMTAC executive director Mr. Auggie Tantillo.
"We do not believe that the increase in textile and apparel output over the last four to six months is an accident. It is now apparent that one of the reasons why U.S. textile and apparel output began to increase was that the U.S. government actively began to move toward imposing safeguards on China," stated Mr. Tantillo.
In conclusion, however, Mr. Tantillo noted that, "While the news today regarding the impact of safeguards is good, many companies still are struggling under the massive burdens imposed by China's unfair trade practices. Such practices include, but are not limited to, currency manipulation, non-performing loans, illegal transshipping, intellectual property rights violations, and other direct subsides. It is imperative that the U.S. government address the problems concerning these issues in a comprehensive manner if the U.S. textile industry to thrive in the 21st Century as it did during the previous one."
Yesterday (Nov. 23) The U.S. Government announced that it was dropping all pending decisions for safeguards on imports of Chinese-made textiles in light of the recent deal between the two nations regulating this trade.
The Department of Commerce said that the Committee for the Implementation of Textile Agreements (CITA) had decided to end further consideration of 24 requests for safeguard action on imports from China.
Franklin L. Lavin, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, stated: "On November 8, 2005, U.S. Trade Representative Rob Portman and Chinese Minister of Commerce Bo Xilai announced a broad agreement on textile trade between the United States and China. The agreement establishes conditions on trade in the vast majority of products covered by these cases and provides a general framework for textile trade between the United States and China. Based on these considerations, CITA has ended further consideration of all pending textile safeguard petitions."
Whilst the deal does not preclude new safeguard petitions, the U.S. has agreed to exercise "restraint" in future use of safeguards on those products not covered by the agreement.
